Main breaker question, help needed!

Hey,

I'm kind of new here. I just started posting after lurking for about a year.

Boonieman, I agree that we should all try to do everything we can to be independant and we all love the homesteading way of life.

But without knowing Lindafisk's or her husband's level of electrical expertise, I believe that suggesting an expert or pro is the safest bet. Having worked in the electrical field for that last 25 years, I can honestly say that I have seen just about every thing that can/ will go wrong.

Here's an example. In my previous post I mentioned a brother and his pimples. I worked for a service outfit with my bud, K. K had a call out for a breaker replacement. Simple job, unscrew the breaker and replace. K turned the screw on the breaker and boom. Flash, fireball lots of noise. K was wearing safety glasses but not a long sleeve shirt. Third degree burns over his right arm, to the sleeve, and hand. K loses 6 mos. work. And after four years, he gets little pimples on his arm that are tiny bits of melted copper working their way to the surface. Okay, the investigation revealed that sometime over the life to the panel, someone had replaced the breaker. Whoever did it had lost the breaker screws and had replaced them with longer screws. After years of oxidizaion the screws where tight and hard to turn. When K beared down on them, the bus/ panel flexed enough to allow the longer screws to hit the back of the panel enclosure. Boom. Condensed account of the official investingation.

If they were rebuilding a carbuerator, if they screwed up they could get a new one out of a junk yard, that's one thing. If hubby slips with a screwdriver and shorts across 2 phases, well that's totally different.

And you can get a close estimation by adding up the loads on A and B. Close. But nowhere as good as checking under load.

Call the power company and see if they charge to pull a meter. Ask around at church or farmer's market or what ever social functions you go to. Might surprise you what people know or what people have laying around in their tool boxes.

Also without knowing the cause of the trip, I would be hesitant to replace the breaker just to have the same problem show up. They trip for a reason, safety.

My 2 coppers,

tuvold

A bit OT,but a big thank you to the electricians here.They have really helped me out when I was getting a song and dance from the power company,they told me how to deal with them and what to say,I did so,and they FINALLY admitted there was a problem on their end and fixed it.

So take the excellent professional advice when offered,this is a great freebie these guys are giving us.

BooBoo

The power company itself should be able to help you and then bill can be posted on your next bill you should be able to make payments on it. We can do that here.

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Crashy

Buy a brand new 200 amp Square D load center for $150.

An update! The electric company man came this morning but did not do anything! Just asked dh if he had called someone to fix it yet! Didn't even test the voltage like he said he would.
So the guy that dh talked to yesterday - from a private company- finally showed this evening and said the box is not balanced, it is overloading on one side and he is not sure how because it does not appear to be drawing too much...the main breaker is ok- it will need to be changed eventually but there is a problem with the neutral wire in the sub panel...it has been stripped and some of the wires taken off of it to fit in the box- he said that is not safe and a fire hazard and the house should not have been sold that way....but that's another story!
For now, since we are unsure how long we will be here, dh and him have decided that he will balance/rewire the system and then take the main breaker out-off the side of the house- and put a cut off switch there and the new main breaker switch will be the one in the sub panel. And he will fix the neutral wire!
I hope that makes sense because I am no good at this. Anyway, the guy should come back in a day or two and get it done and he said it would be safe- which is all I'm worried about- and then if we end up staying here we can re-do the whole system in a couple of months.
Thanks for all the help and I will post an update on this when he does the work.

Hi guys, This is Linda's DH... Most of my experience is with aircraft and cars, but I've done my share of outlets, ceiling fans, fixtures, etc... This one has me a little stumped. The electrician came out and he said that the "B" side was overloaded, which makes sense. He also said that the whole thing had been "piggy-backed", which makes me think of "piggy-backing" a powerstrip for more outlets. Anyway, I'm familiar with safety first, but need a little assistance on what steps to take to balance the load.
Note: I've already shot down all of the yellow-jacket nests with "raid".

Your help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Buddy

Hey,

Deleted for technical reasons, Will try again tomorrow.

If you could rent or borrow a clamp on type ammeter you can easily check the seperate a/ b phases coming into the main lugs of your panel. Just clamp it around the wire, turn it to ampere and turn everything on. Especially handy when checking appliance loads, When a compressor turns on it will draw quite a few amps, then usually settle down.

If he is talking about piggyback breakers you have to add them in also. A easy but somewhat counterproductive and dangerous method of adding circuits is to buy piggyback breakers. What you have is 2 seperate breakers in the same footprint as one breaker. So instead of one load, one wire you have 2 loads and 2 wires in one slot. You should be able to see the extra wires going to the same slot when you take the dead front off.

OK once again, If you don't feel confident about doing any of this, get professional help. I can't stress that enough. Breakers trip when they sense an overcurrent or heat. That is to keep wiring from getting to hot and starting fires. However, in one house I did see a breaker fail to trip altogether. Melted a 12 guage copper wire in two about a foot back behind a receptical. It had burnt about 8 inches of insulation off. The lady said that she was using the vacuum and the receptical just quit working.

I'll try to answer any questions you have or someone who is better at roping houses might give better answers. Be safe.

My 2 coppers,

tuvold

Hey,

Also, the last thing to do is to tighten all neutrals. This is especially important if your house is wired with aluminium wire. Good tip for anyone to do if they have to get in their panel.

Your grounded conductors ( neutral, usually white ) are the most important wires in your box. Through thermal cycles they will expand and contract and get loose. If anyone has been in your panel, moving wires around they can get loose also. Just grab a screwdriver and make sure any wire going to the neutral bus is snugged down. Don't tighten it up enough to cut the wires, just make sure they are nice and snug.

Be safe.

My 2 coppers,

tuvold

Ooops, just reread the post about the neutral wire in her last post. What size wire guage is coming into the lugs? How much was trimmed off to make it fit? As long as you don't take off too much it might still be ok. Just make sure that there are no stray wires hanging out of the lug. They could touch something and that could be bad.

Get a liscensed Electrician to do this work. It's probably required by Code. 200 amps can kill you as dead as last week's fish! I'll rewire anything as long as I can completely shut off the power. I had to change a 220 outlet for a window AC recently. It turned out that it was wired to 2 110 breakers. One leg on one breaker & one leg on another. I shut the breaker off that apparently controlled the outlet. I found out that another breaker was involved. I had a meter & I was careful. There is a good reason why building codes require liscensed electricians.

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Hey,

Yeah, I've been pushing that with every post. If LF's Dh shuts off the main he will be fairly safe inse the panel, as long as he's careful. Balancing out the load without the proper meters though .

Its not a main breaker problem evidently .

It doesn't take 200 amps to kill ya, just about 1 millionth of that.

1 mA Barely perceptible
16 mA Maximum current an average man can grasp and "let go"
20 mA Paralysis of respiratory muscles
100 mA Ventricular fibrillation threshold
2 Amps Cardiac standstill and internal organ damage
15/20 Amps Common fuse or breaker opens circuit*

*Contact with 20 milliamps of current can be fatal. As a frame of reference, a common household circuit breaker may be rated at 15, 20, or 30 amps.
When current greater than the 16 mA "let go current" passes through the forearm, it stimulates involuntary contraction of both flexor and extensor muscles. When the stronger flexors dominate, victims may be unable to release the energized object they have grasped as long as the current flows. If current exceeding 20 mA continues to pass through the chest for an extended time, death could occur from respiratory paralysis. Currents of 100 mA or more, up to 2 Amps, may cause ventricular fibrillation, probably the most common cause of death from electric shock.

Fire hazard of improperly wired from the CDC:

There are approximately 290 accidental electrocutions each year.
An additional 800 people die in fires caused by faulty electrical systems every year.
Thousands are shocked and burned as the result of accidental contact with electricity every year.
An estimated $1.2 billion in property damage occurs each year due to faulty use of electricity.

If someone was in the area to help that would be a good thing. Texas is a long way from Las Vegas though or I would be able to take care of it.

My 2 coppers,

tuvold

Good post tuvold!

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